Saturday, May 2, 2009

Hi everyone, I've been churning out some concept art for the enemies. These are some different designs for the smallest enemy that the player will face. Currently the main difference between these enemies and the next level of enemies is their size and shape. The medium enemies will be larger and square. The hardest enemies will be circular, but much larger. These designs may and probably will change, but I think that we've established a good starting point for distinguishable differences between the enemies.

We had a pretty extensive meeting yesterday where we nailed down the concept for the game and the mechanics that we want to implement. I'm going to lay out the basics here for your perusal, but bear in mind that some of this may be subject to change, but I'm confident we can get everything we want in by the end of the month.

It's hard to define the exact genre of game ours is, but it most closely relates to a cross between Survival Lab and Rage 3. I'll break it down into the main components of the game.

A la Survival Lab, the whole game takes place in one level. It starts out just a simple floor and walls with three floating platforms. Enemies will spawn in over these walls in massive waves, dozens at a time. You have two ways of killing these enemies. First you have your trusty melee weapon, which at the beginning of the game will be a stick. Second, you have bombs, which when you start will be a simple 3-second timer bomb. To give you an idea of what this looks like on screen, I threw together a simple mock up of a screenshot in photoshop. Bear in mind this is not indicative of the look of the final project, but the scale and level design will remain relatively unchanged.

In between waves of enemies, you'll have the opportunity to choose a perk for your character OR get full health. Perks fall into 1 of 4 categories: Melee, Bomb, Maneuverability, or Misc. The melee perk is always a better weapon, going from your humble stick up to and through a lightsaber. Bomb perks will upgrade your bomb to have a wider radius, be a remote mine, place more at a time, that sort of thing. Maneuverability perks are things like increased speed and jumping. Misc. perks are just that, they can be anything from slow health regeneration to a damage aura.

In addition to the permanent perks you get between levels, there are also randomly spawning pick ups that give you a temporary (5-8 second) boost like invulnerability or super speed. The trick to these is that not only can you pick them up but so can certain types of enemies.

The last major element to the game is the environment. Where you start with a simple boxed in area and a few platforms, eventually the environment will shift during various waves. Platforms will crumble, lava will flood the first floor, enemies will spawn through doors on the sides instead of just over the top walls, etc. This not only keeps the player from getting bored with the waves, but will add extra challenge to the game.

The goal of the game is to get past 30 waves of enemies. Once you're able to do that, your secondary goal is a highscore. You get points for killing enemies and defeating waves quickly while conversely you lose points for taking damage or dying. Since we'll most likely be launching through Kongregate, we'll be able to use their API to keep track of players high scores and achievements.

That's all for now, we plan to have our Alpha done in a little over a week, we'll keep you posted as we get more done. I'll be nailing down the specifics of the perks and powerups system and working with Josh to nail down the aesthetics so expect to see more on that front soon.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Everyone at Boosh Studios is officially done with all of their classes now, meaning that summer vacation has begun. For us at Boosh Studios, that means development on our first (currently untitled) project has begun. We've set an incredibly ambitious scope for this game, but we're just crazy enough to pull this off.

This also means we'll have some real content to show off soon, as our game is scheduled to hit alpha in just a few weeks. Check back often to learn more about our first title and see some conceptual work.

About Boosh Studios

We're a team of amateur game developers studying at Champlain College. Our team consists of Mark D., Ray Ortgiesen and Josh Terry, and we're looking to develop Flash games for online distribution. Our first release is currently projected for the end of May.